Guise's pretended zeal for the Romish religion allured the clergy, and France was filled with seditious books and sermons. The preachers of the league were the most furious of all sermon-mongers. They preached up the excellence of the established church, the necessity of uniformity, the horror of hugonotism, the merit of killing the tyrant on the throne, (for so they called the king) the genealogy of the house of Guise, and every thing else that could inflame the madness of party-rage. It is not enough to say that these abandoned clergymen disgraced their office, truth obliges us to add, they were protected, and preferred to dignities in the church, both in France and Spain,

The nearer the Guises approached to the crown, the more were they inflamed at the sight of it. They obliged the king to forbid the exercise of the protestant religion. They endeavored to exclude the King of Navarre, who was now the next heir to the throne, from the succession. They began to act so haughtily that Henry caused both the duke and the cardinal to be assassinated, 1588. The next year 1589, he himself was assassinated by a friar. Religion flourishes where nothing else can grow, and the reformation diffused itself more and more in this reign. The exiles at Geneva filled France with a new translation of the bible, with books, letters, catechisms, hymns, and preachers; and the people, contrasting the religion of Christ with the religion of Rome, entertained a most serious aversion for the latter.

In the last king ended the family of Valois, and the next heir was Henry IV. of the house of Bourbon, King of Navarre. His majesty had been educated a protestant, and had been the protector of the party, and the protestants had reason to expect much from him on his ascending the throne of

France: but he had many difficulties to surmount, for could the men, who would not bear a hugonot subject, bear a hugonot king? Some of the old faction disputed his title, and all insisted on a christian king. Henry had for him on the one side, almost all the nobility, the whole court of the late king, all protestant states and princes, and the old hugonot troops on the other he had against him, the common people, most of the great cities, all the parliaments except two, the greatest part of the clergy, the Pope, the King of Spain, and most catholic states. Four years his majesty deliberated, negociated, and fought, but could not gain Paris. At length, the league set up a king of the house of Guise, and Henry found that the throne was inaccessable to all but papists, he therefore renounced heresy before Dr. Benoit, a moderate_papist, and professed his conversion to popery. Paris opened its gates, 1594, the pope sent an absolution, and Henry became a most christian king. Every man may rejoice that his virtue is not put to the trial of refusing a crown!

When his majesty got to his palace in Paris, he thought proper to conciliate his new friends by shewing them particular esteem, and played at cards the first evening with a lady of the house of Guise, the most violent leaguer in all the party. His old servants who had shed rivers of blood to bring the house of Bourbon to the throne, thought themselves neglected. While the protestants were slighted, and while those, who had followed the league, were disengaging themselves from it on advantageous conditions, one of the king's old friends said, "We do not envy your killing the fatted calf for the prodigal son, provided you do not sacrifice the obedient son to make the better entertainment for the prodigal. I dread those bargains, in which things are

given up, and nothing got but mere words, the words of those who hitherto have had no words at all."

By ascending the throne of France, Henry had risen to the highest degree of wretchedness. He had offered violence to his conscience by embracing popery, and he had stirred up a general discontent among the French protestants. The queen of England, and the protestant states, reproached him bitterly, the league refused to acknowledge him till the pope had absolved him in form, the king of Spain caballed for the crown, several cities held out against him, many of the clergy thought him an hypocrite, and refused to insert his name in the public prayers of the church, the lawyers published libels against him, the jesuits threatened to assassinate him, and actually attempted to do it. In this delicate and difficult situation, though his majesty manifested the frailty of humanity by renouncing protestantism, yet he extricated himself and his subjects from the fatal labyrinths in which they were all involved, so that he deservedly acquired even from his enemies the epithet Great, though his friends durst not give him that of Good.

The king had been so well acquainted with the protestants, that he perfectly knew their principles, and, could he have acted as he would, he would have instantly granted them all they wanted. Their enemies had falsely said, that they were enemies to government: but the king knew better, and he also knew that the claims of his family would have been long ago buried in oblivion, had not the protestants supported them. Marshal Biron had been one chief instrument of bringing him to the throne. The marshal was not a good hugonot, nor did he profess to be a papist: but he espoused the protestant party, for he was a man of great sense, and

he hated violence in religion; and there were many more of the same cast. Parties, however, ran so high that precipitance would have lost all, and Henry was obliged to proceed by slow and cautious steps.

The deputies of the reformed churches soon waited on his majesty to congratulate him, and to pray for liberty. The king allowed them to hold a general assembly, and offered them some slight satisfaction: but the hardy veteran Hugonots, who had spent their days in the field, and who knew also that persons, who were of approved fidelity, might venture to give the king their advice without angering him, took the liberty of reminding him that they would not be paid in compliments for so many signal services. Their ancestors, and they had supported his right to the crown along with their own right to liberty of conscience, and as Providence had granted the one, they expected that the other would not be denied. The king felt the force of these remonstrances, and ventured to allow them to hold provincial assemblies; after a while, to convene a national synod, and, as soon as he could, he granted them the famous EDICT OF NANTZ.

The Edict of Nantz, which was called perpetual and irrevocable, and which contained ninety-two articles, beside fifty-six secret articles, granted to the protestants liberty of conscience, and the free exercise of religion; many churches in all parts of France, and judges of their own persuasion; a free access to all places of honor and dignity, great sums of money to pay off their troops; an hundred places as pledges of their future security, and certain funds to maintain both their preachers and their garrisons. The king did not send this edict to be registered in parliament till the pope's legate was gone out of the kingdom, so that it did not get

there till the next year. Some of the old party in the house boggled at it very much, and particularly because the hugonots were hereby qualified for offices, and places of trust: but his majesty sent for some of the chiefs to his closet, made them a most pathetic speech on the occasion, and with some difficulty brought them to a compliance. It is easy to conceive that the king might be very pathetic on this occasion, for he had seen and suffered enough to make any man so. The meanest hugonot soldier could not avoid the pathos, if he related his campaigns. But it is very credible, that it was not the pathos of his majesty's language, but the power in his hand, that affected these intolerant souls.

- No nation ever made a more noble struggle for recovering liberty of conscience out of the rapacious hands of the papal priesthood, than the French. And one may venture to defy the most sanguine friend to intolerance to prove, that a free toleration hath, in any country, at any period, produced such calamities in society as those, which persecution produced in France. After a million of brave men had been destroyed, after nine civil wars, after four pitched battles, after the besieging of several hundred places, after more than three hundred engagements, after poisoning, burning, assassinating, massacreing, murdering in every form, France is forced to submit to what her wise chancellor de L'Hospital had at first proposed, a free toleraTION. Most of the zealous leaguers voted for it, because they had found by experience, said they, that violent proceedings in matters of religion prove more destructive than. edifying. A noble testimony from enemies mouths!

France now began to taste the sweets of peace, the king employed himself in making his subjects

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